Saturday, April 2, 2011

2005 Haiwan Ripe Cake - pink label





I broke up this 2005 Haiwan ripe tea cake (357g) with my tea knife (swiss army) as the compression of this tea cake was quite tight. You will noticed that the wrapper of the cake has a pink background. I had checked and had concluded that this pink label first appeared in 2004; a 400g ripe pu erh cake. This pink label was only used again in this 2005 pressing and I have not seen this pink label wrapper used in recent years.

My initial impression while opening up the cake was good as I could smell a nice strong ripe pu erh aroma. I took quite a number of brews; experimenting with varied amounts of tea leaves as well as infusion times before I came up with a brew I liked. It was, to my personal preference, using less leaves (6-7g to a 160ml teapot) and extending the infusion times by a couple of seconds.

The taste was something like dried berries or dates with a hint of cooked asian rice. I particularly enjoyed the aftertaste of this tea very much. Drinking the tea was very smooth and I get a mild sweetish sensation in the back of my throat a few seconds after consuming the tea.

I had bought this tea in Singapore a couple of years ago. I recently went back to the shop to buy another cake but it was all sold out....#%&@ (censored tea language).


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